Game, Set, Match
by SbenLives
Summary: Dr. Gordon left him to rot in an underground bathroom. Now he's out, and nothing in the city will stand in the way of his vengeance.
1. Of Things to Come

Detective Leland Hale pushed his way into the room and instantly regretted stopping for lunch beforehand.

The chemical lab at Whannell University, perhaps the most distinguished and beloved institute of education in the state, was stained with glowing crimson streaks. The glowing was a product of the numerous police officers sweeping their flashlight beams across the room, frantically searching for any evidence they could pick over. Hale couldn't blame them for being desperate.

The crimson trails, after all, were copious amounts of blood. The blood, naturally, was coming from the body.

Upon noticing Hale's arrival, one of the officers – a stocky woman who was clearly fighting the instinct to contribute her stomach contents to the crime scene – rushed over to him. Her light illuminated his face for an instant, and as was the case with many people Hale ran into, her eyes zeroed in on the scarred crater where his nose would have been.

The discussion of how he'd lost it was one he'd been forced to partake in many a time, and he knew there was a more important subject to tackle. "So where is it?" he asked, diverting to the aforementioned subject.

The stunned officer slowly nodded, opening up the sealed plastic bag she was carrying and bringing out a tape recorder with one gloved hand. "We already checked for prints, to no success, but we didn't want to play it until you arrived. Seeing as you're the only Jigsaw expert who hasn't yet turned up as a pulpy mess, you'll get more out of a listen than any of us will."

Hale slipped on his own glove and accepted the recorder. He found himself wanting nothing more than to crush it underfoot, as if that would somehow destroy the evil of the man who'd utilized it, but instead he paced to where the victim lay. Before he learned of the prelude, he wanted to get a good luck at the aftermath.

Not that such a look could qualify as "good," by any definition of the term. Deep, clumsy lacerations lined the man's body, and the excruciating pain his death entailed was still frozen on his drained face. Strangely enough, the expected mechanical device was nowhere to be found; there was only the corpse and a couple of bloodstained glass shards scattered around the floor.

Solemn and disgusted, Hale lifted the recorder close to his ear and pressed the button to play the tape within.

"Hello, Travis… or as your students called you, Professor Grant. I want to play a game."

The voice, deep and distorted, was by now quite familiar to Hale. He'd listened to almost every tape that the police department had recovered over the two years that the "Jigsaw Killer" had been active. It still didn't fail to disturb him.

"You have taught chemistry here for the past thirteen years of your life. Your co-workers adore you. Your students revere you. You are paid handsomely every month, and your wife shows you nothing but affection. Yet despite all of these privileges, you felt the need to become… a methamphetamine addict. This calls into question whether you truly value all that you have been given."

The officers around Hale had begun to slow their work, entranced by the recording. In light of the mass hiring necessitated by the recent slayings of many police officials, this would be the first Jigsaw tape many of them would have heard. Hale prayed that it would be one of the last.

"As a teacher, Travis, you should be familiar with handing out tests. Now I am giving you a test. Implanted throughout certain areas of your body are capsules containing the same chemical you have abused. The sum dosage of these capsules is far above the lethal level. If these capsules are to rupture, the toxin will be released into your system, resulting in your slow death by overdose. But all hope is not lost. The marks on your body indicate where each capsule has been planted. Should you manage to remove all of them without a misstep, the electronic lock fitted to the door will be disengaged, and you will be free to leave this room and seek care for your injuries. Can you cleanse the veins you are responsible for poisoning?

"Live or die, Travis. Make your choice."

Hale grimaced as the tape came to a stop. From the looks of the body, the professor had indeed possessed the will to live – what he hadn't possessed was an infinite supply of blood. The incisions were all made over links between vital veins and arteries. Even if Travis had managed to safely extract every capsule, it was doubtful that he would have made it to a hospital in time.

Something wasn't right.

Hale waved over the officer who had greeted him. "Miss, are you familiar with the Jigsaw case so far, in terms of the identities of the killers?"

The officer nodded. "First it was John Kramer and Amanda Young, then when they kicked the bucket, Mark Hoffman took up the mantle." At her mention of the former police detective, she formed an expression of pure revulsion.

Hale joined her in mutual loathing of the man who had disgraced and murdered much of the department. "Well, Hoffman is still out there. We all know he's the current Jigsaw Killer. It's only a matter of tracking the bastard down, right?"

The officer nodded, wondering where he was taking this.

"Well," Hale continued, "Hoffman was a police detective. He worked with machines in his killings, just like Kramer. Do you think he possessed any medical training?"

Curious, the officer shook her head. "I wouldn't bet on it, personally."

"Then how did he set up a situation like this?"

The officer shrugged and fixed Hale with a mildly worried stare. "Nobody suspected Hoffman until Kramer's wife came forward with his name. Maybe he's not the only killer out there anymore."

Hale tossed the tape up and down in his hand, glancing back to the late professor's stiffly agonized expression.

"Maybe."

* * *

**A/N: **This is only an introductory chapter, meant both to set up the "protagonist" of the story and establish the bleak tone from the films. Chapters will get progressively longer as more action and plot threads are introduced, so don't be put off by the shortness.

I'm well aware that the Saw series has a reputation for extremely vivid gore, but I'm trying to avert that in favor of the original film's tense thriller style. Only time will tell if I succeed, I suppose. Any and all reviews are welcomed.


	2. The Good Doctor

Dr. Lawrence Gordon checked his watch.

It was the fourth time he'd done it since arriving here, but according to the display, he'd only been in this room for thirty minutes. That was thirty minutes of uninterrupted silence and dullness, during which even the most insignificant thing he could have accomplished would have had more value.

There were probably patients awaiting his help, but he seemed to be under the watchful eye of the precinct's most incompetent officers, and the questioning he'd been dragged in for was being steadily put off. The longer he was locked in here, the higher the chance of his situation… escalating, so to speak.

Not that he could fault the police department in general for being a little scatterbrained. Finding eleven officers and one highly valued detainee dead by the machinations of Mark Hoffman wasn't exactly an occurrence with a handy protocol to tell everyone where to go and what to do. The recovery and disposal of Jill Tuck's body alone would tie up some resources; Lawrence supposed that not many officers had dealt with a corpse whose face had been completely ripped in half.

_Oh, yes, Hoffman. Even whilst starving to death in a sealed room, your existence continues to needle me._

Absentmindedly tapping his fingers on the table, Lawrence thought back to the death sentence he had delivered unto the rogue killer. Hoffman's desperate, pathetically angry pleas as the bathroom door had closed were still satisfying as he replayed them in his head, especially given the fact that a close friend of his – one Adam Stanheight – had perished under the same circumstances. In fact, Hoffman was currently wasting away mere inches from Adam's desiccated corpse. Seeing the husk of his old friend still chained to the pipe had been agonizing, but he'd managed to block it out by focusing on his business.

Lawrence was struck from his recollections when, as if by the will of some merciful deity, the door swung open at long last. He hurried to make himself look presentable to his interrogator, straightening out his suit and folding his arms on the table.

The man who sat down opposite him was an interesting specimen, to say the least. Lawrence's eyes were immediately drawn to the bony divot in the center of his face, where a nose seemed to have been crudely ripped off. The attention seemed to irritate the man, so Lawrence observed his other features: unhealthily pale skin, sharp green eyes, and short brown hair ruffled by sweat and stress. His expression seemed to be rigidly set in an impassive frown, which Lawrence chalked up to the recent spike in Jigsaw-related activity.

This was a man who had been through some sordid things.

"Good evening, Dr. Gordon," the detective began. "My name is Leland Hale. As you've probably guessed, I'm a detective working the Jigsaw case. I'd just like to ask you a few questions."

Lawrence extended a hand, which Hale politely shook. "Certainly, Detective. Whatever you wish to ask, I'll answer to the best of my ability."

Nodding, Hale took out a small tape recorder, set it to record, and laid it gently on the table. Lawrence knew it was only a formality, as there would no doubt be a camera somewhere in the room. This wasn't the first time the police had pulled him in for questioning.

Hale coughed as he began, probably to indicate a starting point of questioning for later viewing. "You have experience with the Jigsaw Killer, correct?"

"That is correct. I currently number among the small amount of Jigsaw survivors."

"If it's not too much trouble, could you recount your experience?" Hale pushed the tape forward ever so slightly. "In as much detail as you can remember, please. We have your incomplete description on file, but I'd like a more complete summary."

Lawrence pursed his lips and tried to look like he was struggling to find the memories. In truth, every second of his test was seared into his memory; it marked the night he'd reformed himself and accepted John Kramer's visionary ideas. That moment of personal evolution was as cherished as the memory of his own daughter's birth.

"Well, Detective, about two years ago, I was kidnapped from the parking lot of a hotel I'd been visiting. I woke up with my right foot shackled to a pipe in an underground bathroom. Across from me was a man named Adam, in a similar situation, and on the floor between us was the corpse of a man who had apparently shot himself. Through tapes stashed on our persons, I discovered that while Adam was to remove his foot with a hacksaw and escape the room, I was to murder him before an elapsed time, lest my wife and daughter be killed.

"I, unfortunately, was only able to shoot Adam with the provided revolver after the time limit had expired."

Upon noticing Hale's startled expression, Lawrence hurried to correct his statement. "It was only a shoulder wound, meant to fool my observer into thinking I'd won his game. But as I stated, my shot was fired when my time was up. Additionally, the revolver had been placed in the middle of the bathroom, and I was only able to reach it…"

Sighing, Lawrence lifted one of his legs onto the table, revealing a worn prosthetic attached just above his ankle. "By making a sacrifice."

Hale stared at the artificial limb in the same way that Lawrence had eyed his missing facial extremity. Nearly everyone familiar with the Jigsaw murders knew about it, but it was the first time he'd seen it with his own eyes. "And what happened to this… Adam?"

Lawrence assumed a saddened demeanor. "I really don't know. After he disposed of the man we assumed to be Jigsaw, I promised that I would bring help back for him, but I passed out of blood loss outside, and I was later so preoccupied with my family that it slipped my mind. I deeply hope he somehow escaped, but if he has, I haven't been notified."

That was, of course, a lie; he knew exactly what had befallen his friend. Hoffman was probably staring into the corpse's rotted eye sockets right now while he quivered and died on the floor. However, he was still playing the forgetful victim, and trying to track down Adam would take up more of the department's resources.

Hale nodded. "Thank you, Dr. Gordon. The reason I had you summarize that, besides gaining further insight into your case, is that I'm worried that you may have played some part in the later killings."

Lawrence easily acted shocked, without seeming so overwhelmed as to be suspicious. "Why would I feel the need to make others suffer as I did? I'm a surgeon, Detective, a healer by nature. Even if I possessed the resources, I wouldn't be able to stomach murdering people in such despicable ways."

"It's just that there is a precedent for Jigsaw's victims to become his helpers, and we don't want another Amanda on our hands." Sighing, Hale reached into his coat and drew another tape recorder. "Last night, a fresh body was located inside Whannell University. Listen to the tape discovered alongside it, and tell me if you can see why I have my suspicions."

Lawrence obligingly played the tape. He immediately knew what was on it; after all, he'd recorded and edited it barely a day ago. He was particularly proud of the test he'd crafted for poor old Travis. In his eyes, it more resembled the elegant simplicity of John Kramer's early work than Amanda's inescapable torture courses or Hoffman's overly elaborate "Rube Goldberg" devices. The fact that the professor had ultimately perished was of little consequence, since he'd bled out trying to survive, rather than falling victim to any of the strategically implanted chemical capsules. That counted as some measure of success.

Naturally, however, Lawrence pretended to be horrified upon the tape's conclusion. "That poor man. I wouldn't wish such a trial on my worst enemies, Detective."

The detective blinked slowly, seemingly irritated by the answer. "You're a surgeon, Dr. Gordon. Mark Hoffman isn't. There's no way in hell that he could have set such a 'game' up with that level of precision. Speaking of which, have you ever had contact with Mr. Hoffman?"

"The man being spoken of on the news?" Lawrence feigned ignorance. "Never. I'm not sure what I would do if I encountered such a monster, but it would probably be something you could actually charge me with."

Hale was visibly forcing himself to stay calm. "Well, then, I guess that leaves us with the final question. Where were you last night, Dr. Gordon? What were you doing while Travis Grant was torturously murdered?"

_If you only knew, Detective._

"I can provide witnesses and camera footage placing me at the Angel of Mercy Hospital, in my office, organizing routine paperwork." Lawrence couldn't help but smile condescendingly. "As surgeons are wont to do."

The two men stared at each other in silence, like gunslingers seconds away from making the draw. The effect was broken by a distorted jazz tune reverberating throughout the room; its source was revealed to be Hale's cell phone, which he answered without taking his eyes off Lawrence. "Detective Hale here."

Lawrence couldn't hear what the caller was saying, but from the way Hale's eyes lit up, he guessed it was either a promising lead or another tragedy. "I'll be over as quickly as possible. Tell them not to touch anything until I get there." He hung up and slid the phone back into his suit pocket, then motioned to Lawrence.

"That will be all, Dr. Gordon. Thank you for your time."

Lawrence nodded, reaching under his seat and pulling up a thin black cane. With its assistance, he exited the police station, leaving the grimacing detective to his work.

* * *

The St. Emerson Regional Hospital had been abandoned for so long, only historians and amateur ghost hunters could remember its name. It was dank, run-down, and mostly sectioned off from the city itself. Nobody cared to enter it anymore, even when chasing the half-remembered urban myths centered on the general location. It was just… there.

For Lawrence, this made it a perfect building.

He stopped his car around a bus terminal half a mile back and casually walked the remaining distance. It would be detrimental to his cause if something belonging to him was identified on the grounds of a suspicious location.

Carefully, leaving no noticeable footprints on the grass, Lawrence made his way up to the musty entrance. The doors had long since rusted away, so it was a simple, direct path from the courtyard to the lobby. Once inside, Lawrence only had to move down the hall and make his way down to the boiler room – or what remained of it, at least.

At the foot of the basement stairs, where there usually would be a complex system of piping, there was instead a vast array of lethal devices and power tools. Bandoliers of syringes hung on racks, strung neatly around mechanisms that could easily rend flesh and reduce bone to powder. Scattered blueprints detailed even more painful and efficient methods of rehabilitation. An entire table devoted to "reverse bear-traps" sat near the center of the chamber, tended and fine-tuned by a hunched-over figure in a crimson hooded jacket.

Lawrence chuckled and called over. "Salutations, Brad!"

The figure drew back his hood, revealing a curly-haired young man in dire need of a shave. He flashed a boyishly handsome smile and quickly returned to his work. "Hey, Doc! How'd the interview go?"

"Very little of note was brought up, although I seem to have caught the eye of another detective who fashions himself the case-solving hero. If he doesn't turn out like Tapp and Strahm within the month, I will swallow my cane whole." Lawrence paced slowly down to the floor, striding over to Brad's table. "Now, where is Ryan? I need to speak with you both."

"I'm here, I'm right here!" A stringy-haired young man in dire need of a shave _and_ a shower stepped out from behind a column of car batteries. "Just… checking the acid in the batteries, is all."

"Lots of battery acid in your dreams, huh?" Brad replied.

"Oh, shut the fuck up!" Ryan turned to Lawrence, admiration visible in his eyes. "So… what do you need us for, Dr. Gordon, sir?"

Lawrence took a seat by a far table and motioned his apprentices over. "The detective, one Leland Hale, implicated me in Professor Grant's test due to my surgical skills. Surprisingly, not even the most diligent of investigators have made that connection thus far. We will need to keep an eye on him, and be ready to act if the need arises."

Brad nodded in understanding. "We'll start preparing a test right away."

"Ah, but therein lies the dilemma." Something caught Lawrence's eye, and he reached onto the shelf to grasp it. "We cannot test someone if they've committed no crimes. Mr. Kramer never advocated murder. And with Hoffman gone, our connection to the police database is all but snuffed out, so discovering the indiscretions of people in need of rehabilitation will be much more difficult. However, I have faith in you two. Find out everything you can about Mr. Hale. If it turns out that he is a clean slate, we will simply obstruct him and move the workshop."

"And if he's not innocent?" Ryan chimed in.

Lawrence stared at the object in his hands: a formerly rusting hacksaw, now polished vigorously to a state resembling cleanliness. No amount of cleansing could remove the faded red imprints of dried blood on the blade, or the memories of Adam's screams and the invisible fire exploding through his leg.

"Then he'll have to play a game."


	3. Let The Games Begin

**A/N**: Apologies for the long wait since the last chapter! I've been running into trouble with other writing obligations, and this series has been resting on the backburner until now. Rest easy – regular updates will be a priority from now until the end of the series.

* * *

Somewhere along a road far away from the city limits, a parked car started up.

The car was registered to one Shepherd "Zep" Hindle, an orderly at the Angel of Mercy Hospital. This information should have aroused great suspicion, however, as Zep had gone missing two years ago after a shooting incident in a suburban household. In reality, Zep had perished in an underground bathroom that the police knew nothing about, having been beaten, mutilated and left to decay to the point where he would be unidentifiable except to the most extensive DNA testing. In short, he was in no condition to be driving a vehicle.

The man behind the wheel was not Zep. A cursory glance at the driver's license would clarify that. Where Zep's features were angular and his eyes bulging, this man was bulky and stoic. His overgrown stubble and badly scarred cheek pointed to recent troubles, of which he'd suffered many. That wasn't even to start on the shredded mess of tendons and bone that remained of his right foot.

The man's name was Mark Hoffman.

Everything had been going so well for him a couple of nights ago. Fresh off his vengeance against Jill Tuck and with a precise window of opportunity left by his organized slaughter of the city's police force, Hoffman would have been able to skip out of the country with his amassed funds, leaving his pursuers none the wiser. He'd actually been walking away, his hideout's flaming remains behind him and freedom glimmering tantalizingly ahead, when the pig-masked assassins had leapt from cover and paralyzed him long enough to cart him into an oh-so-familiar bathroom.

The face of their leader – that deceptive, self-satisfied grin that made him look like a particularly smug car salesman – was permanently etched into Hoffman's mind. He knew the man that face belonged to. Most everyone familiar with the Jigsaw case knew who Lawrence Gordon was, and given that Hoffman was an active part of the case almost since its inception, he was intimately familiar with the good doctor. As far as he'd been aware, Lawrence was the first of John Kramer's survivors not to become an apprentice himself.

As it turned out, that had not quite been the case.

Hoffman refused to dwell on the memories that came after Lawrence had sealed the bathroom door, leaving him chained between three moldering skeletons. His escape had been clumsy, excruciating, and resulted in him being short an important limb. It hadn't been a dignified severance like Lawrence's, either. Hoffman had been conditioned to the point that his pain threshold was sky-high, and the method he'd used to free himself had broken that threshold several times over. His only comfort was the idea of inflicting thrice the pain on Dr. Gordon, and while he'd messily limped his way out of the tunnels, he had come up with an intricate scheme that made his initial bid for revenge and freedom seem like a shopping list.

Now, after spending a few nights sleeping in this car and tending to his crippling injury, he was ready.

The first stop on his path to grinding Lawrence's head into a smear of gore rested in the middle of the city. This could potentially have posed a problem, given that the entire precinct was out for his head. Luckily, his destination was nestled in the middle of a district known for poverty and gang violence, which was an unlikely place for the police to search. Even if he was spotted and reported, he would only be visiting this place for thirty minutes, maybe less if he were quick.

Hoffman pulled up by the entrance to a graffiti-streaked warehouse, briefly arguing with himself on whether or not to lock the car door. Theft of all varieties was common in this place, but if he needed to make a quick escape, every second could be precious. With the aforementioned probability of encountering an officer, locking prevailed, and he continued on into the warehouse.

The stairs leading up to his destination had not been trodden on in years, and as such were weak and coated in mildew. The threat of several steps caving in altogether was lower on Hoffman's mind than the constant pain of shifting his mutilated appendage; he silently spewed profanity at Dr. Gordon and gritted his teeth until the floor in question was reached.

Inside, Hoffman was greeted with a two-tiered room sectioned by another stairway. All of the racks and musty furnishings were coated in ragged police tape, and places where equipment had previously been lain were long-since bare. Several bloodstains on the floor were still visible, in spite of the time since blood had been spilt here.

Despite David Tapp's disastrous two-man raid and the PR fracas that followed, the police department had still managed to suck Jigsaw's very first workshop dry. Every trap, weapon, and identifying motif currently rested in a special evidence room at the police department, a pool of resources that was very obviously out of the question. Little evidence remained of the fact that this had been anything more than a storage room, and anything that could be looted from here would be all-but worthless.

So everyone thought, anyway.

John Kramer had been an intensely paranoid man, and throughout his reign as the Jigsaw Killer, every exploit and police reaction was thoroughly planned in advance. He had almost never been taken by surprise, and the few times he had were swiftly escaped with inhuman improvisation. That was one of the few ways Hoffman took after his mentor, and it would be a key element to the success of his plan.

Kramer would have expected to be discovered eventually. The workshops at the Wilson Steel warehouse and Gideon Meatpacking Plant were already set up by the time Detective Tapp had barged in. Ergo, he surely must have left something behind in case of emergency: something no investigators would know to look for.

Hoffman drew his lighter and flicked it on, illuminating the space. Even emptied out, it was still labyrinthine, and he would have to adapt the plan if his search threatened to overdraw on his allotted time. The most likely places for an easily located hiding spot were hilariously unlikely in this situation. Thus, he began the search not in the workshop itself, but in the escape route.

A series of stairs connected to a fenced-in portion of the room, leading to a long hallway even more decayed than the workshop. Hoffman blinked away the lingering mist from the poorly maintained structure and crossed down to yet another flight of stairs, this one leading to Kramer's original exit route. Artificial cobwebs meant to disguise tripwires had been overtaken by genuine ones with such frequency that it was impossible to tell real from fake, but any traps would surely have been disarmed and removed by the police.

Hoffman made his way over to an area where the ceiling raised sharply upward. The lingering stain of Steven Sing's blood marked the area where he would stop to search. During its active days, standing here would have resulted in several rounds of buckshot from a row of mounted shotguns, making it an inadvisable place to look. Naturally, this was his first choice.

It took twenty consecutive minutes of searching to find what he was looking for, but what mattered was that he found it. The next ten minutes were spent loading the cargo into his vehicle, and then he was off.

* * *

Not many people visited the Archangel Clinic, unless they were in dire need of immediate attention. The Angel of Mercy Hospital, which Archangel Clinic was in fact an offshoot of, received more patients, higher funding, and a more prolific reputation. Still, it was a nice thing to have around in case of emergencies.

Bobby Dagen was definitely thankful for its existence. As he lay in the stiff bed in tried to pretend the sitcom on the TV interested him, it regularly occurred to him how easily he could have bled to death if not for the convenient location of the clinic. The trauma to his pectoral muscles, so his doctor had told him, was very nearly fatal.

And at first, he hadn't much cared.

Joyce and Gale, his wife and lifelong best friend respectively, were dead. The S.U.R.V.I.V.E group had disbanded, and most of its members had changed their names and fled to different parts of the country in fear of being abducted and tested again. His own motivational books were now little more than disgusting sacks of crap, having been written on false accounts that he now had real experience with. To top it all off, he barely had enough money to pay his medical bills.

For several days after the ordeal, he'd contemplated hoarding his painkiller dosages and taking a huge supply of them at once.

However, with an on-site therapist's help, he was already focusing on a new goal in life. The trauma he'd suffered at the hands of the Jigsaw Killer – Mark Hoffman, as the news reports had told him – was pouring out as material for his latest book, "Boiling Point: The True Story Behind S.U.R.V.I.V.E", which detailed his deceits and how one could genuinely try to overcome the pain of the infamous killer's machinations. As soon as it was completed, he would have all of his previous books pulled from the shelves; people didn't need to keep hearing the bullshit he'd spun.

Bobby involuntarily shivered: a side-effect of the medication he was on, to be sure, but partially motivated by his memories of the terrible jackass he'd once been. In a way – and he was only entertaining this idea in the barest of senses – Jigsaw actually had helped him become a better person.

He would probably leave that train of thought out of the book.

* * *

"Welcome to the Archangel Clinic, sir! How can I help you?"

Hoffman stared at the overeager young man behind the counter, a bitter taste in his mouth. "I'm here to visit Bobby Dagen. Would you tell him his publisher sent me? It's very important."

The poor fool bought right into his lie, clicking through a list of rooms on his monitor. Hoffman was just aware enough of proper procedures to recognize a new guy on staff, and an improperly trained one at that, but he said nothing. It just made things that much more convenient.

"Bobby Dagen is in room 107, sir."

"Thank you."

With that done, Hoffman reached into his pocket, pulled out the Beretta 9mm pistol he'd snuck through the clinic's outdated metal detector, and planted a bullet between the kid's wide eyes.


	4. Aftermath

**A/N**: I'm quite bad at keeping to schedules! As soon as I published the last chapter and promised to keep updating regularly, I came down with a serious cold and minor double ear infection. I'm alright now, but it's still inexcusable that you readers should have to wait as long as you have been. This story is NOT dead or on hiatus, and it won't be - I'm seeing it through to the bitter, bloody end.

Now, after this, I'm going on a bit of a break. I'm devoting all of my resources to an original horror story, "Streets Inside Me", which you'll be able to find on my accompanying Fictionpress account (same name as here), and which should be completed by Halloween. After that, back to business as usual.

But enough of my rambling. Enjoy!

* * *

"So what are we looking at?"

The police officer aside Hale placed his hands on his hips, nudging a lock of black hair out of his eyes so that the wreckage was more visible. "We're looking at a generally fucked-up situation, Mr. Hale."

Hale fixed the man with a pointed glare. "Are you an officer of the law or an amateur comedian? I need to know what exactly I've been called to help with."

"Sorry, sorry, just trying to lighten everything up. Serial murder investigations get pretty depressing." The officer grinned mirthlessly and started fumbling with his hip flask, which Hale could tell had been mostly emptied. "Some junkyard workers called in some time ago about an explosion in one of their warehouses. Fire department got here, found the husk of one of those stupid little puppets, and called us. What you're seeing before you is all that remains of Mark Hoffman's workshop."

At his silence, Hale's frown deepened. "I know that much. I wouldn't have come if I hadn't been told that much. Now why is Hoffman's workshop nothing but a pile of smoldering scrap on the gravel, and where do you think he went?"

Finally opening the flask, the officer guzzled a mouthful of strong-smelling alcohol and sighed. "Preliminary reports are saying that Hoffman set up a propane tank in the building, doused everything around it in gasoline, lit it up, and got the hell out of dodge. Considering what he did just before, this was most likely a means of covering his escape. As for your second question, well, that's what you're here to help us with, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is." With that, Hale paced forward, listening to the gravel crunching under his boots. The officer's prior description was turning out to be apt; he couldn't think of a more fucked-up turn for the situation to take. If Hoffman was this desperate and methodical, it was highly unlikely that they would be able to find anything pointing to his escape.

Several rows of black bags lining the perimeter of the wreckage caught Hale's attention. He was experienced enough to recognize body bags on sight, so the more pressing issue was who occupied them. Luckily, each one came labeled with names and approximate times of death, so Hale wasn't forced to listen to any more exposition-happy officers for information.

_Name: Gibson, Matthew._

He was only able to read the first part of the first label before uttering a hearty swear and turning away.

He had better things to be focusing on than the confirmed death of a colleague – well, 'better' being a relative term – but knowing where Gibson's body ended up still rattled him. Swallowing the proverbial bitter pill, Hale marched over to the ruins themselves.

For the center of a tremendous explosion, the warehouse was impeccably preserved. Its walls and foundation still stood firm, despite visible burn marks around its exterior. If the entrance hadn't been rent asunder and blown into a loose semicircle across the junkyard, an accidental electrical fire could easily have been taken for the cause. It went without saying that the interior had been obliterated, but Hale thought it was interesting. Hoffman could have been so much more precise with his explosive.

While forensic analysts combed the ashen field that had once been the innards of the warehouse, Hale paced over to the side, following a trail of white tape that indicated possible evidence. Although any footprints would have been lost to the elements by now, it seemed likely that this would have been Hoffman's chosen escape route.

Then he saw the bag, and beside it, the circle.

Curious, Hale knelt down to examine the bag. It was an dirt-covered, dull green travel bag, unopened and surrounded by indicators that only appointed Jigsaw experts were to examine its contents. Something about this struck Hale as wildly unnecessary and making things more difficult for regular officers, but then again, the city had never been known for its efficient bureaucracy.

Hale decided to cut his mental tangent off and carefully opened the bag.

He stared for a while, unsure of what to make of its contents. Inside the bag was the pistol Hoffman had clearly used once during his assault on the police station; Hale knew this from his obsessive repeated viewings of the camera footage prior to the murder at Whannell University.

Underneath the gun was roughly $50,000 in cash.

This had to have been Hoffman's bag. It was the only option that made any sense, but it in turn raised several burning questions. Why had he left such valuable cargo behind when making his escape? He would have to be hiding somewhere now, penniless and weaponless, just waiting for the cops to track him down. Unless, of course, this was a deliberate red herring meant to throw the investigation off his real trail. Hale wouldn't put it past Hoffman, but he doubted even the heir to the Jigsaw legacy could afford to leave thousands of dollars behind as a simple distraction tactic.

Then he turned to the circle: a ring of tape marking a carefully preserved patch of ground under a plastic seal. Hale could tell that the ground beneath the seal was slightly moistened, but he dared not tamper with it for fear of destroying whatever evidence was there. Instead, he located the corresponding label for the evidence marker, finding only a chemical name that he was hazily familiar with.

So… Hoffman was nowhere to be found, he'd left his equipment behind, there were traces of an unknown substance around the area, and someone else was possibly setting up additional murders. Hale knew exactly what that pointed to, but he wanted more than anything to shout himself down for being ridiculous.

Before he could think on it further, the black-haired officer sprinted up to him, a wild look in his eyes. "Something's gone bad down at Archangel Clinic. They want all officials there right the fuck now."

* * *

- Two Hours Later -

It was so… clean.

Two years ago, Hale had started working on the Jigsaw Killer case. Over that time, he'd seen more gruesome deaths than most horror movie producers could even fathom. He'd seen corpses with faces chopped up by knives, naked men wrapped in barbed wire, women ripped apart from the inside out. He'd seen security camera footage of people being burned alive, impaled, shot repeatedly, disemboweled, sawn in half, beaten to death, and so on. And he'd lived with the knowledge that the man who committed these crimes against humanity was someone he'd shaken hands with in the office and applauded for at award ceremonies.

But the massacre at the Archangel Clinic was one of the most horrific things he'd ever seen, and there were only a few dried pools of blood on the floor.

One intern, eight doctors, five nurses, the entire security staff, and at least three patients bore surgically precise holes between their eyes. They'd been shot in the halls, in their offices, in their beds. They'd been caught completely by surprise. This wasn't even some twisted punishment for perceived crimes. These people were completely anonymous. They'd done nothing but go about their business, scream, run, and fall into their own blood spatters.

Twenty-six people dead, and for what?

Hale stepped over the bodies, over the Angel of Mercy doctors brought in to tend to the few survivors, and made his way down the hall. Officers were already moving to investigate the scene, but Hale doubted Hoffman would have left behind any indication of his motives. He was planning something, and this was only the first step. How it meshed with the evidence Hale had compiled earlier, he couldn't begin to say, but he had a feeling it would only become clear when all of the blood was spilt and the man in question had made yet another death-defying escape.

A small crowd of officers and doctors was gathered just inside the entrance to Room 107, which was conspicuously the only untouched room, save for a trace blood drop here and there. A pillow lay discarded on the floor, having fallen from one of the patient beds, but everything was otherwise pristine. In some strange way, the cleanliness was even more foreboding than the bloodshed outside.

Once again turning his brain to "information sponge" mode, Hale tapped a nearby doctor on the shoulder. "Excuse me, sir. I'm a detective working on the ongoing Hoffman case. Would you mind telling me why there's so much going on this particular room?"

The doctor turned, and Hale's mind immediately clamped shut.

"Oh, Detective Hale, what a coincidence!" Lawrence Gordon smiled an insincere grin; Hale sensed some bitterness from their earlier meeting. "That I should be among the doctors moved to attend to this tragedy, and you among the first responders… it truly is a small world."

Hale stammered to respond. "Erm… sure is. Now, Dr. Gordon, if you would be so kind as to answer my question…"

"I would if I could, Detective," Lawrence said. "All I've been told is that a patient has gone missing, likely abducted by our irascible friend Mr. Hoffman. Archangel's computer system is rather outdated, so it's apparently taking some time to cross-reference the names among the deceased and confirm a lead."

Blinking slowly as he processed this information, Hale wandered over to the bedside. Lawrence followed, curious as to what he might uncover. The first thing Hale inspected was the dropped pillow, which he turned end over end in his gloved hand. Knowing what he knew, Hale decided that this could likely have been used to smother the abductee into unconsciousness after most of the resistance had been… dealt with.

If only Archangel had been renovated recently enough to have significant security camera presence, so that Hale could confirm his hypothesis and figure out who the patient actually was.

As it turned out, he didn't have to wait very long at all for the answer.

A chubby doctor with half-moon glasses pushed his way into the room, waving a half-torn sticky note. "The patient's name was Bobby Dagen!" he shouted through what sounded like a small-scale asthma attack.

Both Hale and Lawrence flinched, recognizing the name. Hale knew from constantly poring over every detail related to the Jigsaw case that Dagen was one of the most recent victims, and one of the few confirmed to survive after being picked up on the steps of Hoffman's asylum death course. How Lawrence knew was another matter entirely, but Hale chalked it up to the man being a famous author and motivational speaker on the subject of the killer.

Hale stepped up, grabbing the note from the man's sweat-glistened hands. However, rather than a name or any identifying information, he was instead greeted by a long sequence of letters and numbers. He silently indicated them with one finger, raising an eyebrow in exaggerated confusion.

The doctor calmed down slightly and responded to Hale's unspoken question. "Those are… Those are GPS coordinates, sir. Don't know what for, or who left them, but they're in relatively fresh ink, so…"

He needn't have said any more, as Hale was already leaving, note in hand. Bobby Dagen's kidnapping could wait. If Hoffman was sending a message – a location, no less – it was highly likely to be a trap. Nevertheless, it was the closest thing to a solid lead that they'd been able to catch so far.

While he hurried to notify the chief of police and rally up an investigative force, he failed to notice that Lawrence had slipped out of the crowd and left the hospital moments before him.

* * *

He had to be sure.

Lawrence half-walked, half-limped out to his car, brushing his exit off to passing doctors as important family matters. In truth, his family was long gone, mistaking him for some shell-shocked psychopath one word away from going off the deep end. Anyone close to him would have known that, which was why he never let his coworkers get too close to him.

He clambered into his car and hastily started it up. His navigational system piped up with a list of destinations, but he silenced it. He knew the location he was going by heart.

Lawrence had remembered Bobby Dagen, not just from his smug and overbearing S.U.R.V.I.V.E. seminar, but also from Hoffman's very last test before he'd gotten out of control. As the apprentice covertly appointed to oversee all games from the shadows, he'd recognized that the justifications for Bobby's tasks were flimsy at best, and the tests themselves stacked against Bobby and his friends in an even more extreme way than normal. The game had been nothing more than a distraction tactic while he dealt with Jill Tuck, and was made to be impossible; yet somehow, Bobby had escaped with his injuries and made it to the clinic alive. He'd won in the barest sense of the word.

Only one person could possibly want more out of the man, and that person was dead.

Lawrence stomped on the brakes as he pulled into an obscured corner of the lot, just between several other abandoned vehicles. Praying that nobody would recognize or photograph his license plate, he limped out and started making his way toward the squat concrete building. The door, as always, was left unlocked; nobody had used this place for somewhere over twenty years. Not for its intended purpose, anyway.

As always, a wave of moldering, stagnant air hit Lawrence on the way inside, but he was too panicked to think too much of it. He slowly made his way down the claustrophobic hallways, which were lined with pipes whose supply of boiling steam still pumped cyclically through the system. In fact, this place received everything from plumbing services to electricity, mostly from private suppliers who had no idea what they were collaborating in.

The enormous, rusting steel door at the center of the complex was his destination, as was the case last time. He paused outside, resting his hands on the freezing metal and gazing down at the dried blood trail that began inside the room and continued beyond the very path he'd just taken. The sight brought back fresh memories of what had turned out to be the most wonderful day of his life, but that was not what drew his focus. No, it was the second trail beside it that rattled him to his core.

_No… no, please…_

Drawing in a nervous breath, Lawrence threw the door open and flicked the switch just inside.

The overhead lights flickered on in sequence, illuminating small sections of filthy blue-white tile and shattered bricks. The layout of this bathroom was so ingrained in Lawrence's psyche that he could count out most of the shards and detritus seconds before they fell into the light. The scent of chlorine and rotten flesh stung his nostrils long before their obvious sources were visible, and a slight change in the air pressure caused his eardrums to 'pop'.

Then the decaying pipe at the furthest corner of the bathroom fell into view, and Lawrence found himself unable to stand. He slumped forward, catching himself in a puddle of blurry muck and nearly slipping his prosthetic out.

_No._

There were only three corpses in the room. He listed them off automatically: Xavier Chavez on his back by the urinals, Zep Hindle and his pulped face in the corner, and… Adam still chained up where he'd been abandoned.

Hoffman was gone.

Hoffman was _alive._

How? He'd taken every precaution to ensure that the punishment was permanent and unchangeable. He'd taken the only usable hacksaw from the premises, and had Brad and Ryan empty out every toilet tank lid or loose chunk of rock before the time had come. There was nothing Hoffman could have used to get out of his chain. Nothing at all.

The shackle was still laying next to Adam's body, and Lawrence crawled over to it, trying to piece together this impossible turn of events. A small pile of bloody tendons and bone marrow rested below the ankle space, already mostly decayed away. The wounds it would have taken to leave such remains… Lawrence was baffled.

Only then did he glimpse what appeared at first to be a line of blood on the tile. Upon closer inspection, Lawrence realized what it truly was.

There had been two saws in the bathroom. Adam had broken his and thrown it into some corner. He'd… he'd forgotten all about it.

_Hoffman hacked his damned foot apart with your saw, Adam. The mistake you made saved his life._

Shaking his head, Lawrence stood up and brushed himself off. Hoffman would be coming for him eventually. It didn't matter that the entire city was out looking for him; the relentless bastard would find a way. That hospital shooting would be the opening volley; he would have to be prepared for whatever Bobby Dagen was about to be a part of.

Lawrence took two limping steps across the tile, headed for the door. Before he crossed through it, though, he turned to look back at the chained corpse in the furthest corner.

_"D-don't worry… I'll bring someone back… I… p-p-promise…"_

_Lawrence turned and started to crawl. Never had he felt this kind of indescribable agony, but he ignored it. He focused on the doorway, tantalizingly empty, beckoning just across the room…_

_"LAWRENCE!" Behind him, Adam seemed to be slowly draining of all passion and will to live. "Lawrence…!"_

_He was just inches away from freedom, and he could bleed to death at any second. But… he couldn't just leave. Not like this. He clung to another pipe and pulled himself to a half-upright position, turning to face his best friend one last time._

_"We're gonna be okay?" Adam asked from behind a thick sheen of sweat and tears._

_Lawrence could have told Adam about the help he planned to get. He could have sworn up and down that nothing would stop his crawl to the outside world. He would have said so many things if every second didn't cost him another drop of blood…_

_"I… I wouldn't lie to you."_

Lawrence bit his lip and felt something welling up behind his eyes. Swallowing to steady himself, he centered his eyes on Adam's maggot-bared sockets. "I wanted to keep my promise, Adam. You have to understand… John was the one who found me, made it so that I could still be here… and he didn't think you passed the…"

_No excuses._

"I'm sorry."

Lawrence turned and limped down the familiar halls, headed back toward his car.

And then he heard the sirens.


End file.
